


A Gentle Murderer

by lonelywalker



Series: A Particularly Bad Period in History [3]
Category: Miracle Workers (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Coda to 2x05, Established Relationship, M/M, Power Dynamics, slightly rough sex, wildly anachronistic fantasy history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22939246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: Cragnoor kills three people and hurts one. It's the one he's worried about.
Relationships: King Cragnoor/Lord Chris Vexler
Series: A Particularly Bad Period in History [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1698502
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	A Gentle Murderer

**Author's Note:**

> So 2x05 was not exactly great for Team "King Cragnoor Has Never Done Anything Wrong Ever" but hey, don't believe all that mainstream liberal town crier nonsense. King Cragnoor the Kind is just a big soft boy whose perfectly normal hobbies include skullcrushing and mass murder.
> 
> Disclaimer: The author does not endorse genocide. But skullcrushing is probably fine if you get the right consent forms.

Every time, it began with a tingle in his fingertips. A burn that chilled, like the touch of frost in the deepest winter. He was never so calm as in the moments after that feeling, in those moments filled with absolute clarity that were nothing more than a straight line drawn between himself and survival. All he ever had to do was follow the line. 

When he was nine, a spare prince expected to attend to his books and his manners, he’d broken his cousin’s nose in the stables, kicked a rib right through his lung, and might have crushed his windpipe if he’d known a tiny bit more about what it took to kill a man. By the time he was twelve, lesser siblings dead from war and plague, he knew his anatomy and his weapons, and no cousin or sibling would ever stand in his way again.

Battles were a dismal affair, even for an heir with custom armor and a fine sword, even for a man with his strength and skill. They were sports based on more luck and attrition than talent, weary men flinging around iron and smashing soldiers into crumpled heaps of blood and bone. He could teach someone how to use a sword, a shield, a mace. He had no idea how to teach someone how to stay alive. He was a survivor, not a leader. He followed the line. He stayed alive. And afterward, he never had any idea how.

There were three of them on this occasion. Three strong siblings. Three skilled fighters. Three swords. And he killed them, because the only other option was to die. The line did not tell him how to die. It narrowed his focus, sharpened his senses, and whispered in his ear. Many years ago, when he was a boy marrying a girl, his young wife had giggled at his stumbling dancing and he’d blushed pinker than a lovers’ rose. She’d showed him the steps then, much as she had hours later in her chambers.

With a sword in his hand, Cragnoor never needed to be told what to do.

But when it was all over… That was a very different matter.

After some battles he’d found himself walking through forests, through snowdrifts, his sword still drawn and no enemies in sight. Other times he’d be on his horse, riding back from a victory, an aide happily talking to him about something he couldn’t track. Once he’d woken up in a ditch full of the dead and dying, slung two wounded cavalrymen over his shoulders and trudged back to camp.

Now… His blood was boiling as he walked through the castle hallways, ears still ringing with the sound of his own manic laughter, and the only clear thought that remained was: _Chris_.

Vexler had been there all day, quietly taking care of details like he always did, and his growing unease had been palpable as the evening wore on. Where Chauncley naively believed that every story was inevitably heading for a happy ending, Vexler instinctively braced for impact. He was very rarely wrong.

Cragnoor slammed his shoulder into the sturdy oak door that blocked the entrance to Vexler’s chambers, opening it with what felt like his last, strained breath. 

He anticipated questions as Vexler would jumped up from his desk, where he was almost obscured behind his books and abacus: alarmed and concerned, and maybe a little exasperated. So many questions that Cragnoor couldn’t hope to grasp, let alone answer. But instead Vexler’s hand was cool on his blood-slicked face, and Vexler’s mouth let him breathe again, and Vexler said: “Whatever you need, I’m here.”

Cragnoor needed so very much.

If the battle itself didn’t leave him utterly drained, he would expend his energy in any way he could, crushing skulls, throwing himself into any activity he could find, and fighting anyone who got in his way. This was how a man could become king. It was not how any man stayed king.

Vexler had been a source of calm for him lately, emanating quiet competence among a maelstrom of idiocy and anarchy. There was a unique kind of solace he could find in Vexler’s bed, in Vexler’s body, that an ocean of wine and blood could barely touch. Vexler understood him on a level no one else had approached in years, and Vexler wasn’t scared of him… Well, no, Vexler was _very_ scared of him, but at least he managed to forget his fear for hours at a time, so long as Cragnoor remembered his courtly manners and let himself smile.

“Chris.” He thought he said it, but he couldn’t hear himself, and in any case it didn’t express a tenth of what he wanted to say, about everything that had happened and how he felt and why he was grabbing Vexler so roughly by his leather jerkin and pressing him face-down into the now-pristine bed where they’d woken up just hours ago in a mess of tangled blankets. 

He’d dropped his sword, hadn’t even heard the clang of metal on stone, and now the blood on his right hand was smearing over Vexler’s sheet. Vexler reached for him then, interlacing their fingers for one moment before Cragnoor jerked down his trousers. 

This wasn’t the release he wanted, spitting on his hand and taking Vexler in a way that was rough and brutal and what soldiers made do with on long campaigns. But he did need release and it came quickly enough, washing over him as Vexler shuddered under him.

Then he was lying on Vexler’s bed, watching his crown stain the sheets red, and Vexler was saying his name. The world rushed into his consciousness and everything became startlingly, painfully clear.

“Is the prince all right?”

Usually he was good at piecing things together, but this defeated him as he squinted into a dull halo of candlelight that was suddenly too bright. “Chauncley? Why…?” Had Chauncley been there? What had probably happened minutes ago was like trying to recall something that happened in childhood. Chauncley’s eager explanations of charades and parlor games receded before his grasp, nothing more than a distant dream.

He struggled to sit up and was confronted by the blood still caking his bare hands and layered under his fingernails, by much more that had been smeared over Vexler’s face and clothes and sheets. His discarded sword lay across the doorway.

Vexler gripped his forearm, simultaneously reassuring and anxious, trying to anchor him in the present. “I’m going to find out what happened. Stay here. Please.”

Caring for his sword was something he could do mechanically, cleaning it on already-ruined sheets and returning it to his scabbard, which he unbelted and propped against the wall. Then he removed the top layer of his clothes, wiping his face roughly on his tunic - it was one thing to strike a fearsome figure, another to leave every room he entered stained with arterial blood. There was a cut above his eyebrow, but it was shallow and pathetic, the bleeding already staunched.

“You killed all three of them,” Vexler said when he returned. He had cleaned himself up, his tone more wondrous than dismayed or sickened. “Three mighty rulers, mighty fighters, all armed, and there’s barely a scratch on you.”

Cragnoor shook his head, busy removing his boots. “Of course not.”

“Of course?”

“You know my brothers, my sister… If there were more than a scratch on me I’d be dead, and shortly after you’d be dead, and this whole castle would be in flames, rendering this entire conversation moot.”

Vexler smiled. “You’ve got your tongue back.”

Cragnoor grunted.

“Don’t see why they’d have to burn down the whole castle,” Vexler continued. He liked talking. Probably because talking generally precluded bloodshed and him having to arrange for three corpses to be removed from the great hall. “Perfectly good castle. Seems like a waste.”

Cragnoor set his boots neatly together on the floor, taking much too much care to align them precisely. “I hurt you,” he said quietly. “I horrify you.”

“You’re my king. I’d lay down my life for you.”

Cragnoor let out a long breath and lifted his gaze. “ _Chris_.” 

“You didn’t hurt me. At least, not more than I’d want you to. And I’ve seen a lot worse. But you do owe me an explanation, if we’re speaking as friends.”

“Are we at war?”

“Their aides beat a hasty retreat. Didn’t stay for dessert. We’ll probably find out if their heirs - all those adorbs nephews and nieces of yours - are interested in a tussle in the morning mail. Speaking of heirs, Chauncley’s fine. Covered in blood, but pretty much okay. Seems to run in the family.”

Cragnoor digested this, along with the fact he’d been much more concerned about Vexler’s wellbeing than that of his own son. He valued Vexler’s good opinion far more, at least. “Do you ever think it’s been unwise for you to tie your destiny to mine?”

“You’re my king,” Vexler repeated. “And you’re the best swordsman I’ve ever seen. Better that my destiny’s tied to you than any of the three fuckers you left in the great hall.”

“I won’t be the best swordsman forever.”

“Forever’s a long way away.”

Introspection had never been one of Cragnoor’s strong points, but Vexler made him want to confess his every thought and worry. “I’m getting old, Chris. I can’t see the way I used to. One day when there’s three of them, or five, or one, I won’t be the one walking away. But you could. Leave, find another kingdom. I wouldn’t come after you.”

Vexler looked at him the way most people looked at Chauncley when he was spouting idiocies. “I’ve been to other kingdoms. They’re brutes and oafs. How long do you think we’ve got? Five years? Well, better I spend any of that time alive, standing by my king, than leaving and, what? Getting garroted by bandits on the road out of town? Catching the plague and coughing up my own lungs? No thank you. I’m yours and you’re mine. That’s how it is.”

“Brave words.”

“Yeah, I mean obviously I’m still going to piss myself the second the Valdrogians break through the castle gates, but until then I’ll be super brave.”

Cragnoor couldn’t prevent a smile from coming to his lips, even if it was lopsided. “Being the only thing standing between this kingdom and utter destruction feels a little less lonely when you’re beside me.”

“Why your grace. You say such sweet things to your loyal servant.” Vexler stepped close to him, fingers combing through Cragnoor's wild, blood-stiffened hair as he planted a kiss on his forehead. “You need to learn how to relax. And if you can’t, that’s what opium’s for.”

“That shit gives me nightmares.”

“Yet you can behead a dozen people and sleep like a baby. Maybe we should go to Falcon Island, do nothing for a week but fuck on the beach. There’s no one there this time of year.”

Arguing was intuitive, even when Vexler’s ministrations over his scalp were draining away tension with every touch. “Because it’s a near-glacier inhabited by lethal scorpions and irascible witches.”

“I should’ve known the zero vacation days in my contract was just saving me from myself. But the point stands. You need to relax. And maybe you wouldn’t be the only man standing between us and apocalyptic doom if you taught Chauncley how to do half of what you can do with a sword.”

Chauncley. A boy for whom mastering the use of a spoon had taken decades. “I don’t _know_ half of what I can do with a sword. You told me I owed you an explanation. I don’t know that I have one. I just knew the instant they arrived that they meant to kill me. The three of them, arriving together when Trex and Gamillagoor barely manage to exchange Christmas cards. You think my actions were impolitic, but…”

“You don’t have to justify things to me. You’re-”

“The king, yes. So we celebrate some ridiculous holiday commemorating the time I murdered some hippies in a forest, and I kill my family before they can kill me, like some blasted mad bull. I draw my sword and I stay alive, and then I feel like… Like my heart has been replaced by the sun.”

“A horny, horny sun.” He tasted the blood on his own lips when Vexler kissed him.

His blood had cooled, but he still grabbed Vexler by the hips and rolled him onto the bed, craving the feel of a body beneath his own and Vexler's sage-lilac scent that somehow still lifted above the stench of sex and blood and sweat that Cragnoor himself had to be emanating. Vexler was so reliably clean, always freshly bathed and ready for him now, and Cragnoor relished leaving him a mess of oil and come every goddamn night.

“Forgive me,” he murmured against Vexler’s lips. “For all of it.” He had to be too heavy, lying across Vexler like this, but Vexler just wrapped lean arms around him and pulled him closer. 

“Forgive you? For killing three people who were one lucky shot away from killing me? My cock won’t ever get soft.”

“Chris…”

“I’m serious. Everyone in this castle has a massive fucking erection right now. All our mouths and asses are yours.”

He could have buried his face in Vexler’s shoulder forever, feeling the tension dissipate across his own shoulders and neck, if only Vexler’s mouth wasn’t so tempting. “I suppose you would like me to say that yours are the only mouth and ass I want?”

Vexler smiled. “I’ve always said you’re smart for a king.”


End file.
